India, US move from cold war to war games

NEW DELHI: With troops from her country engaged in war games with the Indian army for the first time ever, US Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia Christina Rocca can be certain of a warm reception during her visit here.

But historical as the joint-war games are, Rocca, who arrived on Tuesday and will proceed to Pakistan from India, will be more concerned more with the million troops that India has, since December, kept massed on the border with Pakistan, Washington’s “most allied ally” in the region through the Cold War years.

Since December, tension between the nuclear-armed neighbours has spiralled and India has hinted at military action if Islamabad fails to control infiltration by armed “jihadi” groups based in Pakistan. India has also demanded extradition of 20 “terrorists” and criminals that it says have been given sanctuary in Pakistan.

Ahead of Rocca’s visit, the US ambassador in New Delhi has counselled patience with India’s hawkish interior minister, Lal Krishna Advani, who has publicly said that he expected Washington to exert greater pressure on Pakistan to deliver the wanted men, who include plane hijackers and gangland dons and, more importantly, to halt armed infiltration over the LoC.

As if to emphasize that India means business, its army and air force units deployed along the border have been carrying out what have been described as “routine” exercises since the beginning of the month.

“The war games will continue till mid-May and will be an opportunity for some of the units deployed along the border since December to be tested,” an official said.

The official, who may not be named according to briefing rules, said the joint Indo-US war games being conducted since Saturday near Agra and expected to last two weeks are entirely unconnected with the exercises on the border.

According to analysts like V. R. Raghavan, a former director general of military operations in the Indian army, while the Indo-US military exercises are not directed against cross-border terrorism, “where US and Indian interests are jointly affected the collaborative exercises conveys a very significant message”.

Raghavan said that “Exercise Balance Iroquois” at Agra demonstrated deepening and widening military cooperation between the two countries and their common perception of threat from terrorism.

A defence ministry spokesman said the exercise, involving US special forces from its Asia-Pacific command and Indian army paratroop commandos, were a follow-up on new defence ties and focused on airborne assault involving para-jumping.

The exercises follow the signing of an Indo-US agreement on cooperation between the navies of the two countries to secure maritime trade routes between the Suez and the Straits of Malacca. Joint training exercises were conducted in March.

There are plans for joint exercises in Alaska and naval exercises involving submarines, aircraft carriers and maritime reconnaissance aircraft in the near future, said an Indian defence official.

Last month, India purchased eight long-range, artillery-locating radars from the United States, marking a significant departure from the days when New Delhi depended almost exclusively on Russian military hardware as part of Cold War military alignments.

But ever since the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came to power in 1998, New Delhi has pursued a policy of aligning itself with Washington, although that policy suffered a setback following its May 1998 nuclear tests that invited a welter of US-led international sanctions.

India had the consolation that Pakistan, which carried out retaliatory tests within days, was also placed under similar sanctions. However, sanctions on both countries were lifted following the Sept 11 aerial attacks on Washington and New York and the new “war on terrorism,” announced by US President George W Bush.

With the Afghanistan phase of the war on terrorism now over, the United States has begun examining other targets in the region, including within Pakistan where elements of the Al Qaeda network are believed to have taken refuge. India believes that some of these groups may now surface in Kashmir.

According to Prof Amitabh Mattoo, who teaches international relations at the prestigious Jawaharalal Nehru University (JNU) and is an expert on Kashmir, India will have to wait till the snow melts in the high mountain passes to know if “jihadi” elements are indeed crossing over the LoC in significant numbers.

Mattoo said he would expect Indian officials to ask Rocca how much longer India is expected to wait and keep its troops massively mobilized on the 1,800 mile border, which stretches from the Siachen glacier in the north to the blistering Rajasthan desert.

Estimates have put the cost to India of maintaining troops on the border at more than $800 million a month — and that is money an impoverished country with high rates of illiteracy and malnutrition among its one billion population can ill afford.

“An incident like that on Dec 13 (when Parliament was attacked) can lead to situation where there can be an exchange of fire and things can spin out of control,” said Ved Prakash Malik, a former Indian army chief.—Dawn/InterPress Service.